Svilupparty 2013 + new Speed Fragment tech demo

Svilupparty 2013 + new Speed Fragment tech demo

Let’s see… Yeah, another month and an half from the latest post! :D

Now, seriously: the festive atmosphere of Svilupparty is still in my heart. The cozy lounge of the Cineteca di Bologna has seen a lot of developers and players all togheter in what has been a really interesting event, already came to its fourth edition.

Svilupparty 2013

What is Svilupparty? The name says it all: it’s nothing less than a indie party for every indipendent game developer (“sviluppatore” == developer) here in Italy. We had the opportunity to showcase our creations and experiences here in the city of Bologna, both with specific talks and with our beloved format: free desks where to put up our game stations (computers, smartphones, tablets…), so visitors could freely try out our games. Think about the Codemotion, but for indie games only, and with more people! I was here with my Mac, my iPhone and an iPad, to which a second PC was added later thanks to my friend Giancarlo Todone.

This was my desk on Sunday (the iPhone is missing: I was taking the pic with it!) What is that guy doing with his hand? Continue reading. :)

The lounge we were in: always full of people!

The first day was spent only for talks; many developers gave precious insights of their experiences about many different topics (but everything related to game development).
The second and third day were, instead, the core of the whole Svilupparty, having us happily showcasing our games (while other talks were running in the background). I have to say it all went pefectly:

I met many players and talked a lot with them.

Many people played my games with interest.

Everyone who played Speed Fragment liked it.

Beach Marbles did a very good impression too.

I got, again, a lot of positive feedback.

I found many fans of F-Zero and Wipeout: Speed Fragment raped their heart.

I ran out of business cards.

THE LEAP MOTION OMFG!!!

Yes, the mighty Leap Motion, a cool USB device that can track your hand(s) and fingers movement in 3D space. My friend Giancarlo Todone (already mentioned above, I really owe him something!) brought it togheter with some super-easy APIs ready to be added to Unity. It was matter of minutes before we had a fully functional Speed Fragment version with complete support for the Leap Motion device: we fantastically called that build “The Leap Fragment“. It has been an huge success among all the players! See it in action, it’s worth it:

A very dedicated Speed Fragment player!

A girl playing with the Leap Motion. There are not only male pilots!

Talking, playing, coding, doing networking and one or two short interviews: my personal Svilupparty experience has been great, despite my games didn’t feature everything I wanted. For example, I should have fixed the current bugs in Beach Marbles Racing, but I had no time to do that. More important, I should have organized a Time Attack contest with some neat prizes, but I guess I’m reserving that for the next time… :)

Speed Fragment tech demo

And here we are: you can play the same Speed Fragment tech demo running at the Svilupparty, within your browser, with the Unity3D Plugin. Experience the new full 3D graphics, better AI, a new track, and some other fixes and improvements all around.
As usual, everything you see here is absolutely not final. Also, notice that this version does not support the Leap Motion device! I’ll be making a separate release for it, later. We have something cooking…

You should already know how it goes: my time is very limited so I’m updating my games very slowly, week by week, and I’m really unable to make any guess about release dates or future updates.

What I can do though, is giving a big thank you to everyone reading this, but most of all, to everyone at Svilupparty telling me live how much they liked my games. It was the best feeling of the whole event: you’re awesome. :)

Pedal to the metal!

Danjel

3 Responses to “Svilupparty 2013 + new Speed Fragment tech demo”

Awesome game! I really get a feel of the speed in it. :) I thought the HUD felt a bit out of place with that pixel perfect fade from black to transparent… then I checked your newest post and saw you updated the HUD to awesome. :D